I went to a "First Birthday Party" for my friend's DS yesterday. It had been a long party, but finally they brought out the cake. His mom helped him blow out the candle, and then an older friend of the family said "Ok! Now it's time for our birthday tradition!!". They held the cake up close to the baby, and his mom pushed his face into the icing!!!

Of course, he started crying!! They all acted so surprised that he was crying, and someone said that it "must be because he had been grouchy today." Because, of course, it COULDN'T be that his mum had just shoved his face into a large cake.

I have NEVER heard of this "tradition" before, and honestly think it was plain awful...! I'm not very good at keeping quiet when I get upset at something, so I excused myself and went home. Am I crazy for finding this sad and unfortunate? Or is this a more common and accepted practice then I thought?

For 1st birthdays we always get a small smash cake in addition to the regular cake and smash babies hand in the cake and let them play with the cake. Ds had a blast shovling tons of chocolate cake into his mouth (and all over his face!) for his birthday. But of course we didn't put his face in the cake.

Mom to Ninja Boy (8) To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. and Monkey Man (6) To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts..

Sounds pretty mean and awful tacky to me! ugh- poor little birthday boy! I told my husband I'd divorce him if he shoved cake into my face when we got married, so I can't imagine doing that a little one!

Walking the slow & steady path to crunchy with my all granola kiddo and not at all crunchy husband.

The only tradition involving cakes and first birthdays that I've ever heard of is to give the birthday child a piece of cake (or a "smash cake" - only heard of that recently) and let them make a huge mess of themselves with the cake and icing.

We do the "mini" cake for baby too - but we definitely don't shove babies face into it!! We just put it in front of him and let him go to town....I've never heard of anyone shoving a child's face into the cake - how rude!!

Momma to two boys...: Nolan ('05) andDylan ('08) and expecting a July 2010!!

wow - i never would push a babies face INTO a cake! I cant believe people thought that was OK

In our family we do have the "tradition" of allowing baby to be as messy with cake as possible.. even encouraging the mess - but not physically doing anything either. At most we try to get the 1 yr old to mimic hand motions of rubbing their now caked hands in their hair...

Must be a family tradition only. I've never seen or heard of that before, and we've been to a LOT of first birthdays! We always just set a big piece of cake on the highchair tray and watch what happens.

My family always did the birthday spanking. One swat on the bottom for every year. I thought this was universal, but so far no one's mentioned it. Was it just us? It wasn't a real spanking, but they always teased us that it would be. I never liked this one as a child - made me nervous.

I've heard of pushing the baby's face in the cake unfortunately. Pretty much everbody I know does the 'smash cake' and I've seen a couple times when the baby doesn't dig in and get all messy fast enough people will 'help' I hate it and would never do that to my baby.

We always assumed that the birthday kid would get cake all over their hands, and probably face. But shoving baby's face into it is completely out of line.
I always thought the whole thing with shoving wedding cake in your new spouse's face was horribly tacky. But they are adults. I don't think I could allow my kids to spend much time around folks who have so little consideration for a child's feelings.

That is ridiculous and horible, I guess some people think they just do what they've heard done before. I've never seen or heard of this done in uk before and I don't get the idea to make as much mess of food and eating as you can kinda strange. A pp mentioned birthday slapping, good grief, they do birthday bumps here though, pretty sure not to little ones. In school on your birthday you would get picked up by several kids hands feet etc and bumped on the ground corresponding to your years, of course this could be painful.

so....I can't help but wonder, as I read about smash cakes, if this family is, well, lacking common sense? I mean, it sounds like they've see lots of pictures of first birthdays where the baby is all messy and covered in cake, never actually attended one and so didn't really reach the correct conclusion on just how baby got that way. It sounds to me that they thought someone helped. Weird and awful and just *duh*.

like the others i haven't heard of this either. 'smash cakes' seem to be the norm.

the biggest 'tradition' that i hate is the "birthday spanking." my immediate family never did it, but one summer, i was at m grandmother's for my birthday (we happened to be staying there between houses (one sold before the next was available). my aunt (who is crazy) was also there at the time, and she said and did a lot of nasty things to us.

usually, my mom or dad would step in--for example, once i didn't want to eat boiled spinach, and my aunt said that if i didn't finish it, i'd have to take all of my meals on the floor like the dog,, and then proceeded to put my plate on the floor with the dog--and my parents said no.

but for some reason, they didn't say no to the spanking. this might be because the whole family was there--all 4 of my father's siblings, their SOs and children, and apparently they ALL did this at every child's party. (prior to this, we lived far away and so we always had family parties that were the immediate family, no GPs, Aunts, uncles, cousins, etc). so they allowed it.

i was humiliated and mortified. i really dislike that crazy aunt too. and her children are seriously f-ed up.